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Wiki Wormhole: In 1838, Missouri witnessed the “Missouri Mormon War”

With more than 5.4 million articles, Wikipedia is an invaluable resource, whether you’re throwing a term paper together at the last minute, or confirming that dire wolves were in fact real animals (now long extinct). We explore some of Wikipedia’s oddities in our 5,447,662-week series, Wiki Wormhole.

What it’s about: Not strictly speaking a war, but the first of three small-scale armed conflicts between Mormon settlers and their non-Mormon neighbors. The third, the Utah War, finally established that territory, and then state, as a permanent home for the faithful. The second, based on its mentions in Wikipedia, seems to be called the lesser-known Illinois Mormon War, which followed the death of Joseph Smith, the religion’s founder, in 1844. But the Missouri conflict was also pivotal to the religion’s history, as a key part of its …